How Europe’s Air Traffic Management transformation started

Almost twelve years after the beginning of its inception at the end of 2014, passengers all over Europe continue reaping the benefits of the air traffic management (ATM) modernisation pioneering projects co-funded by the European Union and coordinated by the SESAR Deployment Manager.

Let’s go back to 2014 and have a look at how this all started. The SESAR Deployment Manager (SDM), as the Air Traffic Management (ATM) community knows it today, required less than two years from its definition by the European Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) Nº409/2013 to make itself a crucial strategic partner to support the European Commission in achieving the European Union’s sustainable transport and mobility objectives. Parallelly to the provision of the SDM function as the authority responsible of translating the SESAR Deployment Programme (SDP) into an operational reality, the creation of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), managed by INEA (CINEA - European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency as from 2021), aimed at accelerating investment in the field of trans-European networks and to leverage funding from both the public and the private sector, CEF Transport making €24.05 billion available from the Multiannual Financial Framework 2014-2020.

As concern and awareness about sustainable air transport, originally stemming from the Single European Sky framework layout, prompted a common, synchronised approach throughout the ATM Innovation Cycle —definition, development, deployment— the enactment of Pilot Common Project (PCP), the preceding EU regulation to the current Common Project One (CP1), itemised the needs and requirements of ATM modernisation for the timely, coordinated deployment of SESAR solutions to achieve the essential operational changes emanating from the European ATM Master Plan.

The pivotal regulatory arrangement that has been reshaping European airspace for more than a decade already commenced the challenging endeavour of bringing together ATM stakeholders towards a common goal. Twelve years after the first CEF Transport call was awarded —€1.1 billion— and with more than 300 submitted implementation projects (IPs), SESAR Deployment Manager experts have curated a list of pioneering projects that laid the groundwork of the benefits passengers, environment, and industry continue to reap today.

CP1 Benefits (by 2040)*

*The calculated benefits relate to the 343 EU co-funded, SDM-coordinated Implementation Projects.

The full deployment of CP1 will unlock saving benefits amounting to €51.8 billion. To help making feel the numbers tangible, CP1 environmental savings so far amount to:

• the annual emissions footprint equivalent of around 2.3 million EU citizens, close to the inhabitants of Rome in 2025,

• the equivalent jet fuel consumption of around 1.3 million flights in the European Network.

CEF added value

CEF support has been much more than a financial contribution to the implemented projects: it has acted as an accelerator and a safeguard for the timely and synchronised deployment of SESAR technologies across Europe. Many PCP/CP1 ATM investments require significant upfront resources while their operational or financial benefits only materialise over a longer timeframe; others need to be implemented by stakeholders that may not themselves capture the direct benefits, despite providing an essential technological building block for the wider European network.

By reducing these investment barriers, EU co-financing enabled stakeholders to move ahead earlier and according to a common roadmap, while the implementation timelines for co-funded projects, linked to PCP/CP1 regulatory deadlines, provided an additional incentive to accelerate deployment and deliver project benefits within the agreed timeframe.

At the same time, CEF co-funded projects brought together stakeholders with different operational and commercial interests, creating partnerships around a shared objective and enabling investments to be planned and implemented in a coordinated way across the European ATM network.

This was particularly important for a system as interconnected as European ATM, where the benefits of one technology often depend on its coordinated implementation by airports, airlines, air navigation service providers and other operational stakeholders across borders. CEF therefore helped turn regulatory ambition into operational reality, incentivising early movers, strengthening cooperation while protecting the synchronisation needed for CP1 technologies to deliver their full benefits for the European network and, ultimately, EU citizens.

Since all details and great project achievements would take us too far, let’s focus on wide-spread best-in class projects to illustrate the huge positive impact of more than a decade of EU co-funded ATM modernisation on flying today.

Extended Arrival Management

Headlining the SESAR Deployment Programme, ATM Functionality ‘Extended Arrival Management and Integrated Arrival Management/Departure Management in the High-Density Terminal Manoeuvring Areas’, commonly known as Extended Arrival Management and Integrated AMAN/DMAN, comprises the first set of SESAR solutions making a significant difference in European Air Traffic Management by optimising groundside and airside operations concerning aircraft arrival and departure sequencing to improve predictability and smoothen traffic flows.

CP1 Implementation Project “AMAN upgrade for extended horizon at DSNA airports”, entirely deployed by November 2020, represents an early paradigmatic example of how inevitably intertwined the main SDM stakeholder groupings are and how crucial their cooperation is to succeed in the common mission of transforming European skies. DSNA (Air Navigation Service Provider of France), Groupe ADP (Aéroports de Paris), and Air France joined forces under the coordination of SESAR Deployment Manager to extend the horizon of AMAN to en-route airspace in France main Area Control Centres (ACC) —Paris and Marseille—, integrate collaborative processes between airports and airlines, and prepare AMAN capabilities to export sequences to cross-border systems. By augmenting AMAN’s radius of action from 100-120 to 180-200 nautical miles (about 333 km or 45 minutes of flight time) from the arrival airport, aircraft modify their cruise speeds and descent profiles beforehand and arrive at each merging point in their predetermined order and time, resulting in an efficient flow of arriving traffic all the way to the runway, ultimately reducing holding times, fuel burn and emissions.

The operational benefits delivered up to 2025 are calculated at around 104k minutes of passenger’s time and 8.9 k tonnes of CO2 .

Further exploring the concept of Extended Arrival Management (E-AMAN), the two-part Implementation Project “XMAN - Cross-centre arrival management”, co-funded through CEF calls 2015 and 2016, aimed at the cross-border leverage of AMAN in multiple European airports. The validation of a common service for E-AMAN enabled common awareness and consistent, coherent interactions among all actors involved; the quintessential, harmonised SESAR deployment was key, once again, not only for the work packages’ successful completion but for the demonstrated benefits delivered.

Free Route Airspace

Free Route Airspace (FRA) is the landmark SESAR solution when it comes to tangible savings; mitigating airspace congestion by allowing aircraft to operate shorter, more predictable trajectories has proven to be critical for significantly reducing flight times in the European ATM network. Borealis Alliance brings together nine Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs) —Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom— to drive air traffic management modernisation in the north of Europe. The consortium led three SDM-coordinated projects spanning across 2014 and 2023 aiming at the accelerated cross-border implementation of Free Route Airspace in three Functional Airspace Blocks (FABs): North European FAB (NEFAB), Danish-Swedish FAB (DK-SE FAB), and UK-Ireland airspace. This batch of Implementation Projects, which makes a compelling case for the stakeholders’ cooperation that succeeds to overcome the challenge of flying a fragmented airspace managed by more than thirty separate ANSPs, has delivered altogether savings amounting to more than two million in CO2 emissions and almost 20 million minutes*.

In Bulgaria, where traffic complexity is especially high due to geopolitical unrest in nearby states, the local ANSP BULATSA completed in 2021 the implementation of their groundbreaking Traffic Complexity Assessment Tool (tCAT) that reduced manpower hours by 2.5% and returned investment within two years. The tool simulates in real time the future ATCO workload and, based on that dynamic forecast, offers optimized airspace configurations. The successful deployment of tCAT reduced sector manpower hours by 2.5% and returned investment within two years.

More than ten years after the Pilot Common Project, the SESAR Deployment Manager has deployed, with the support of the European Commission - DG MOVE and CINEA and the relentless commitment from its operational stakeholders, 343 ATM modernisation projects and significant benefits in time, fuel, CO2 emissions, and money savings. The historical momentum that is helping reshape European skies calls for the continuity of the strategic alliances with EU institutions and operational stakeholders looking ahead into the upcoming CP1 successor: CP2.